May 13, 2008

Troy McMahon on Planting Restore Community Church

Troy was on staff at Community for 10 years after leaving a job at General Mills. Troy was sent with 20+ people from Community to start a Restore Community Church in Kansas City. It launched with 423 people on March 2nd of this year. The surprise was the high number of students who were there on the first day. Eleven weeks later the kids and student numbers have increased and Restore is now averaging little over 300 people. Here are some key learnings that Troy gave us at our NewThing Gathering.

Did fund raising from multiple sources (churches, individuals and church planting organizations).

Did 18 service projects in the community before the launch of the new church. This included raking leaves, servant evangelism, Troy being Santa at a local mall and more!

Interviewed lots of community leaders: principal of schools, business leaders, civic leaders. And learned lots of good information that they didn't get from demographics that they purchased. This was very valuable.

Started small groups before the opening day.

Started a turbo group from the beginning with fourteen people and eight of them started a small group with two of those groups already reproducing new groups.

Great thoughts Troy! I'd be interested in why you started small groups before you even launched? Nelson Searcy recommends not starting small groups until 6 months after the launch, which does seem kind of extreme.